Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Nailed it

So chemo just keeps on giving. As well as my heavy achy tax legs, my finger nails are coming lose and falling off. I feel like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. But definitely a lot less hairy.

Most of my fingernails have starting lifting up – basically they are no longer attached to the nail bed, apart from at the bottom. I was aware of this side effect of Docetaxel, but was told on the grapevine (or Facebook) that painting your nails with a dark varnish could help to protect them from UV light, as it is this that apparently reacts with the drugs causing damage to the nail. I’ve had dark gel on for the majority of the time I was having Tax, and up until about 3 weeks ago my nails seemed in good condition. However not anymore. Here is a picture of the offending nails once the gel had come off:

How attractive. The lighter bits of the nails are where they are no longer attached to my fingers. The thumb nail on my left hand has already fallen off. I did a repair job last night – painting them and sticking a false nail on my thumb where the real one has come off:

I'm hoping that no more of them decide to divorce themselves from my fingers, however the thumb nail on the other hand seems to be on the way out. So to add to my fake hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, I now have fake nails. Not much different to pre cancer times I hear you cry? Well these are not enhancements, but rather to cover up where bits of my body have fallen off or disappeared. They help me to look human enough to be able to go outside and not scare the the living daylights out of small children or people's pets. I am also soon to have a fake tit to make up for the one that will be removed. Just call me Frankenstein! Or Frankenboob....

2 comments:

I am going through this now. It is so painful. I had hand foot syndrome or better yet nueropathy. I think that is what caused it.

It is slowly going away in my hands but still in my feet. I hate it. I only had one dose of Taxotere - then the doc changed it and now I am on Abraxion. I have 1 cycle plus one more treatment from cycle 2 ( 4 treatments in all) left to go.